Anti-Marcionite prologues.

Late century II?

These prologues, also called the Old Latin prologues, precede each of the gospels in some
copies of the Vulgate. Scholars disagree as to their exact
date, but many place them in the late second century. A Matthean prologue is not extant.

I make no attempt here to present a true critical text of these prologues.
The variants noted are only those that are in my judgment the most significant for the overall
meaning of the texts; I have not listed those variants that are of an incidental or accidental
nature. Nor have I listed which or how many Old Latin manuscripts witness to each variant. My
only purpose is to preserve all significant readings. Suffice it to say that each variant
is represented by two or more manuscripts. There are no stand-alones. (The necessary
exception to this rule is the Greek version of the Lucan prologue, which as far as I can tell
has only two manuscripts as witnesses, so the single variant that I list must necessarily
pit one against the other.) For a critical text, refer to Jürgen Regul, Die antimarcionitischen Evangelienprologe, pages 16, 29-35.

A forward slash / separates different variants. A dash — indicates
that some manuscripts lack the words of the variant altogether.

Mark made his assertion, who was also named stubby-fingers, on account
that he had in comparison to the length of the rest of his body shorter fingers. He was a
disciple and interpreter of Peter, whom he followed just as he heard him report. When he was
requested at Rome by the brethren, he briefly wrote this gospel in parts of Italy. When
Peter heard this, he approved and affirmed it by his own authority for the reading of
the church. Truly, after the departure of Peter, this gospel which he himself
put together having been taken up, he went away into Egypt and, ordained as the first bishop
of Alexandria, announcing Christ, he constituted a church there. It was of such teaching
and continence of life that it compels all followers of Christ to imitate its
example.

The Lucan prologue, extant in both Greek and Latin. The first
part of the Greek has no Latin translation:

The holy Luke is an Antiochene, Syrian by race, physician by trade.
As his writings indicate, of the Greek speech he was not ignorant. He was a disciple of the
apostles, and afterward followed Paul until his confession, serving the Lord undistractedly,
for he neither had any wife nor procreated sons. [A man] of eighty–four* years, he slept in
Thebes, the metropolis of Boeotia, full of the holy spirit. He, when the gospels were already
written down, that according to Matthew in Judea, but that according to Mark in Italy,
instigated by the holy spirit, in parts of Achaea wrote down this gospel, he who was taught
not only by the apostle, who was not with the Lord in the flesh, but also by the other
apostles, who were with the Lord, even making clear this very thing himself in the preface,
that the others were written down before his, and that it was necessary that he accurately
expound for the gentile faithful the entire economy in his narrative, lest they, detained
by Jewish fables, be held by a sole desire for the law, or lest, seduced by heretical fables
and stupid instigations, they slip away from the truth. It being necessary, then, immediately
in the beginning we receive report of the nativity of John, who is the beginning of the
gospel, who was the forerunner of our Lord Jesus Christ, and a partaker in the perfecting
of the people, and also in the induction of baptism, and a partaker of his passion and of
the fellowship of the spirit. Zechariah the prophet, one of the twelve, made mention of this
economy. And indeed afterward this same Luke wrote the Acts of
the Apostles. And later John the apostle from the twelve first wrote down the apocalypse
on the isle of Pathmos, then the gospel in Asia.

John the apostle, whom the Lord Jesus loved very much, last of all
wrote this gospel, the bishops of Asia having entreated him, against Cerinthus and other
heretics, and especially standing against the dogma of the Ebionites there who asserted
by the depravity of their stupidity, for thus they have the appellation Ebionites,
that Christ, before he was born from Mary, neither existed nor was born before the ages
from God the father. Whence also he was compelled to tell of his divine nativity from
the father. But they also bear another cause for his writing the gospel, because, when he
had collected the volumes from the gospel of Matthew, of Mark, and of Luke, he indeed
approved the text of the history and affirmed that they had said true things, but that they
had woven the history of only one year, in which he also suffered after the imprisonment
of John. The year, then, having been omitted in which the acts of the tribes were expounded,
he narrated the events of the time prior, before John was shut up in prison, just as it
can be made manifest to those who diligently read the four volumes of the gospels. This
gospel, then, after the apocalypse was written was made manifest and given to the churches in
Asia by John, as yet constituted in the body, as the Hieropolitan, Papias by name, disciple of
John and dear [to him], transmitted in his Exoteric, that
is, the outside five books. He wrote down this gospel while John dictated. Truly Marcion the
heretic, when he had been disapproved by him because he supposed contrary things, was
thrown out by John. He in truth carried writings or epistles sent to him from the brothers
who were in Pontus, faithful in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Monarchian prologues.

Century IV or V.

These Latin prologues are thought to be of Monarchian origin. The Monarchians believed
that God was of only one essence, and that therefore the father and the son were in fact one
and the same. The prologues precede the gospels in some manuscripts of the Latin Bible. I present them here in the order on which their very contents
insist, the canonical order typical of the Latin tradition before Jerome:
Matthew, John, Luke, Mark.

I make no attempt here to present a true critical text of these prologues.
The variants noted are only those that are in my judgment the most significant for the overall
meaning of the texts; I have not listed those variants that are of an incidental or accidental
nature. Nor have I listed which or how many Old Latin manuscripts witness to each variant. My
only purpose is to preserve all significant readings. Suffice it to say that each variant
is represented by two or more manuscripts. There are no stand-alones. For a critical text,
refer to Jürgen Regul, Die antimarcionitischen
Evangelienprologe, pages 40-50, or to Peter Corssen, Monarchianische
Prologe, pages 5-11, upon which my text is based.

A forward slash / separates different variants. A dash — indicates
that some manuscripts lack the words of the variant altogether.
These same considerations also apply to the anti-Marcionite prologues earlier on this same page.

The English translations are my own, but with the following qualifications.
On pages 208-209 of The Order of the Synoptics Bernard
Orchard briefly summarizes the contents of each of these prologues and comments:

Nevertheless the theological parts of these Prologues are written in such an
involved and labored style that it is almost impossible fully to understand what they are
trying to convey!

I heartily agree! Most of my own translations on this site I check against standard English
translations made by professionals before publishing on the internet, but for some time
no translations of these prologues were available to me. I thus translated the Matthean and
Johannine prologues without the benefit of professional help, except that I consulted S. C.
Carlson, credited below, for the last sentence of the former. Then I finally got hold
of Evidence of Tradition by Daniel J. Theron, who on
pages 56-65 mercifully translates these beastly compositions for the rest of us poor
mortals. So I have cheerfully checked my Matthean and Johannine translations against his,
having to adjust surprisingly little, and used his Lucan and Marcan translations as
an aid for mine. Needless to say, any infelicities in the translations are
entirely my own.

To the best of my knowledge, mine are the first translations of the Monarchian prologues
on the internet.

Matthew, from Judea, just as he is placed first in order,
so wrote the gospel first in Judea. His calling to God was from publican activities. He
presumed in the genealogy of Christ the beginnings of two things, the first of which was
circumcision in the flesh, the other of which was election according to the heart, and
by both of which Christ was in the fathers. And, the number having thus been
put down as three fourteens, he shows by extending the beginning from the faith of
the believer unto the time of election, and directing it from the election to the
day of the deportation, and defining it from the deportation up to Christ that the
generation of the advent of the Lord had been reached, so that, in making satisfaction
both in number and in time, and in showing itself for what it was, and in demonstrating that
the work of God in itself was still in these whose race he established, the time, order,
number, economy, or reason of all of these matters might not deny the testimony, which is
necessary for faith, of Christ, who was working from the beginning. God is Christ, who was
made from a woman, who was made under the law, who was born from a virgin, who suffered
in the flesh, who fixed all things on the cross so that, triumphing over them for eternity,
rising in the body, he might restore both the name of the father to the son in the fathers
and the name of the son to the father in the sons, without beginning, without end, showing
that he is one with the father, because he is one. In this gospel it is useful for those
desiring God to know the first things, the medial things, and the perfect things, so that,
reading of the calling of the apostle and the work of the gospel and the choosing of God,
born into the universe in the flesh, they might understand and recognize it in him, in
whom they have been apprehended and seek to apprehend. It was certainly possible in this
study of the subject matter for us to both convey the fidelity of what was done and not be
silent that the economy of God at work must be diligently understood by those seeking
to do so.*

This is John the evangelist, one from the twelve disciples of God, who
was elected by God to be a virgin, whom God called away from marriage though he was wishing
to marry, for whom double testimony of his virginity is given in the gospel both in that he
was said to be beloved by God above others and in that God, going to the cross, commended his
own mother to him, so that a virgin might serve a virgin. Furthermore, manifesting in the
gospel that he himself was starting up the work of the incorruptible word,* he alone testifies
that the word was made flesh and that light was not comprehended by darkness, placing the
first sign which God did in a wedding so as to demonstrate to those reading, by showing
what he himself was, that where the Lord is invited the wine of weddings ought to cease and
also that all things which have been set up by Christ, now that the old things have
been changed, might appear new. Concerning this the reason for [composing] the gospel
to those seeking shows the separate things which were done or said in a mystery. Moreover,
he wrote this gospel in Asia, after he had written the apocalypse on the island of Patmos,
so that, to whom the incorruptible beginning was attributed in the beginning of the canon,
in Genesis, to him also the incorruptible end through
a virgin in the Apocalypse might be attributed, since
Christ says: I am the alpha and the omega. And this is the John who, knowing that the
day of his departure had come upon him, his disciples having been called together in
Ephesus, producing Christ through the many signs that were accomplished, descending into
the place dug out for his sepulture, after a prayer was made, was laid with his
fathers, as much a stranger to the pain of death as he was found alien to the corruption
of the flesh. And, if he is said to have written the gospel after all [the others], he is
however placed after Matthew in the disposition of the canon as it is ordered, since
in the Lord those things that are newest are not as if last and rejected for their number,
but rather have been perfected by the work of fulness; and this was due to a virgin.
Neither the disposition of the writings by time nor the order of the books, however,
are exposited by us in the details, so that, when the desire to know has been settled, both
the fruit of labor and the doctrine of teaching for God might be reserved for those
who seek.

* Theron takes incorruptibilis on its own, modifying
John, which yields the translation, ...that he himself was incorruptible [and] beginning the
work of the word. But in my own translation before reading Theron I took incorruptibilis with verbi, and Theron notes
that Corssen and Chapman do too, so I have left my translation as it stands. However,
Theron makes a very good point in that John himself will further down be said to be found
alien to the corruption of the flesh (a corruptione carnis
invenitur alienus).

Luke, Syrian by nationality, an Antiochene, physician by art,
disciple of the apostles, later followed Paul up until his confession, serving God without
fault. For, never having either a wife or sons, he died n Bithynia at seventy-four years
of age, full of the holy spirit. When the gospels through Matthew in Judea, through Mark,
however, in Italy, had already been written, he wrote this gospel at the instigation of
the holy spirit in the regions of Achaea, he himself also signifying in the beginning that
others had been written beforehand. For whom, beyond those things which the order of the
gospel disposition implores, there was that necessity of labor especially, that he should
labor first for the Greek faithful lest, after all the perfection of God come in the flesh
was made manifest, they either be intent on Jewish fables and held by a sole desire for the
law or slip away from the truth, seduced by heretical fables and stupid instigations;
furthermore, that in the beginning of the gospel, after the nativity of John had been taken
up, he might indicate to whom it was that he wrote his gospel and by what [purpose] he elected
to write it, contending that those things that had been started by others were completed
by him. To him, therefore, was permitted the power [to record events] after the baptism of
the son of God, from the perfection of the generation fulfilled and to be repeated in
Christ, from the beginning of his human nativity, so that he might demonstrate to those
who thoroughly seek, insofar as he had apprehended it, that, by the admitted introduction
of a generation which runs back through a son of Nathan to God, the indivisible God who
preaches his Christ among men made the work of the perfect man return into himself
through the son, he who through David the father was preparing a way in Christ for those
who were coming. To this not immeritorious Luke was given the power in his ministry of
writing also the acts of the apostles so that, when God had been filled up in God and
the son of treachery extinguished, and prayers made by the apostles, the number of election
might be completed by the lot of the Lord, and that thus Paul, whom the Lord elected despite
long kicking against the pricks, might give a consummation to the acts of the apostles.
Though it were also useful for those reading and thoroughly seeking God that this be
explained by us in the details, nevertheless, knowing that it is fit for the working
farmer to eat from his own fruits, we have avoided public curiosity, lest we should be
seen as, not so much demonstrating God to those who are willing, but rather having given
it to those who loathe him.

Mark, the evangelist of God and in baptism the son of the blessed
apostle Peter and also his disciple in the divine word, performing the priesthood in Israel,
a Levite according to the flesh, but converted to the faith of Christ, wrote the gospel
in Italy, showing in it what he owed to his own race and what to Christ. For, setting up
the start of the beginning with the voice of the prophetic exclamation, he showed the
order of his Levitical election so that he, preaching by the voice of the announcing messenger
that John the son of Zechariah was the predestinated one, might show at the start of the
preaching of the gospel not only that the word made flesh had been sent out but also that
the body of the Lord had been animated in all things through the word of the divine voice,
so that he who reads these things might realize not to be ignorant to whom he owes the start
of the flesh in the Lord and the tabernacle of the coming God, and also that he might find
in himself the word of the voice which had been lost in the consonants. Furthermore, both
going on with the work of the perfect gospel and starting that God preached from the
baptism of the Lord, he did not labor to tell of the nativity of the flesh, which he had
conquered* in prior portions, but rather right at first he offered the expulsion into the desert,
the fasting for the number, the temptation by the devil, the gathering of the beasts,
and the ministry by angels, so that, in setting us up to understand by sketching out the
details in brief, he might not diminish the authority of what was already done, nor
deny the work to be perfected in fulness. Furthermore, he is said to have amputated his
thumb after faith so that he might be held to be unfit for the priesthood. But the
predestinated election held such power, consenting to his faith, that he did not in his
work of the word lose what he had previously merited by his race, for he was the bishop
of Alexandria, whose work it was to know in detail and to apply the things said in the
gospel on his own, and not to be ignorant of the discipline of the law for himself, and
to understand the divine nature of the Lord in the flesh. These things we also wish
to be sought first, and, when they have been sought, not to be ignored
having the reward of the exhortation, since he who plants and he who waters are
one; he who yields the increase, however, is God.

* Theron apparently amends vicerat
to viderat, since his translation has
which he had noticed.